Paleolithic female figurines

A detail which I thought was lovely was that men and women used the same spears, with the same length of blade at the business end. But the handles of women's spears were filed down for their smaller hands. Proper "lady spears"!

Anyway, lots more of the book to go...

There is a fair number of penis related carvings and art- although a penis figurine is a bit more fragile than a figurine showing women’s anatomy…can be easily snapped..or snapped off. As you can see from the cave paintings, both sexes are portrayed in the act.
Many cultures have phallus fertility symbols which would be no more fragile than the Scottish figurine we saw upthread. The fact that so many of these female figures have been found suggests that they were very common indeed. And that the women had enough status to make it worthwhile making them.

There isn’t really any evidence as to what prehistoric people thought because all we have are the material remains, no writing.
If you mean the Scythian tribes, we have the reports about them from people who did write, and the oral traditions. Why can we draw inferences from a cave painting but not from a figurine? Or the ubiquity of a particular type of figurine?

And yes, while there is evidence that in some cultures women were warriors, that doesn’t mean they were equal or part of a matriarchy. In many cultures, the warriors/soldiers are the convicted criminals, slaves, the lowest caste, or the working class from ancient times to modern times. Leaders of soldiers were more likely to have status, whether they actually fought or not.

Cultures where the gender roles differed from us- such that roles we associate with men being for women- like fighting isn’t evidence of matriarchy.

I didn't say the Scythian tribes were a matriarchy - I said the society was equal.

These nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes covered by the generic name "Scythians" lived in a vast area all the way from north-west China to the Urals, to the Black Sea and modern-day Iran from 5000-4000BC into a couple of centuries AD. A burial of a female cavalry general from Thrace has even been found in Roman Britain. They hunted, expanded their territory, stole each other's horses, defended their territories, migrated, etc. There is no evidence of castes. Women enjoyed sexual freedom and equal status with men. The children were brought up pretty much gender-neutral - kids were on a horse practically from birth, riding on their own from the age of 5. Fighting was not a punishment or a menial task - it was a way to achieve high status. Women led hunting or raiding bands - all-women or a mixture of men and women. I refer you to what Mayor says about the rite of passage for girls - of killing a man. The women formed a minority of the fighters but their grave goods were among the richest. They were buried with their horses, bows and arrows, sometimes swords as well. and prized possessions, and occasionally with their children. There is evidence on their skeletons of healed war wounds, injuries consistent with falling off a horse, etc. The name the tribes were originally given means the tribe whose women are equal to the men. Greek writers refer to this sex equality over and over again. There are sagas and songs about great queens in the Circassian language or dialect.

With DNA testing now available, many previously excavated burial sites have been revisited and the graves found to contain female skeletons, not male. In one case, it had been thought that a male warrior had been buried with the burned skeleton of his wife - as it was suttee or similar. The warrior had weapons etc and the other skeleton didn't. It turned out after testing that the warrior was a woman and the burnt skeleton was of a man. Either sex might be buried with mirrors, needles and leather, dyes, weapons or jewellery. Tattoing seems to have been a women-only thing, though.

Excellent thread, thanks @ArabellaScott and all who've contributed reading material.

@Snowypeaks
There is a fair number of penis related carvings and art- although a penis figurine is a bit more fragile than a figurine showing women’s anatomy…can be easily snapped..or snapped off. As you can see from the cave paintings, both sexes are portrayed in the act.

There isn’t really any evidence as to what prehistoric people thought because all we have are the material remains, no writing.

And yes, while there is evidence that in some cultures women were warriors, that doesn’t mean they were equal or part of a matriarchy. In many cultures, the warriors/soldiers are the convicted criminals, slaves, the lowest caste, or the working class from ancient times to modern times. Leaders of soldiers were more likely to have status, whether they actually fought or not.

Cultures where the gender roles differed from us- such that roles we associate with men being for women- like fighting isn’t evidence of matriarchy.

Take for example also working in the fields/farming and house building. In many cultures these are women’s work, in others these are men’s work. But either way, in all cultures we have patriarchy. So we cannot assume archaeological evidence of women hunting, fighting and so on is evidence of equality or matriarchy.

The references linked all date from a period of archaeology and prehistoric theorising that was very Euro-centric and made the error is assuming

• what ever artefacts survived from prehistory must be important rather than simply made from durable material
• the male roles we associate with power and status, were also roles that had power and status in prehistory- this was before interdisciplinary work was a thing so no one thought to look at other cultures where some gender roles were the opposite from European traditions and yet women were still oppressed.

The earth goddess to sky god trend is more linked with shifts in relative importance of pantheons of deities of the ancient civilisations (for which we do have written evidence), rather than prehistory.

D'you mean The White Goddess? Also his Greek Myths?

Fascinating thread. It's a lot later, but these Roman mosaics are also very interesting for what they tell us about women's pastimes. Good commentary here.

https://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2013/11/ancient-roman-girl-athletes.html

There's a great book called the prehistory of sex that I read at university a looooong time ago. Covered a lot of this sort of thing including a whole chapter on the venus figurines and how interpretations have changed over time.

That name hasn't been referenced so far from what I recall - but I'm only about a quarter of the way through. It's definitely the same geographical area.

has the thread referenced Marija Gimbutas yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marija_Gimbutas

She was the originator of a lot of the scholarship around this

LoremIpsumCici · Today 14:29
I’m not convinced all these pottery or stone naked female bodies are goddesses or that there was a mythical pan-matriarchy before ancient civilisations emerged.

These artefacts have only survived because they are durable, not because they are necessarily special or meaningful.

What did they make all the male figurines out of, I wonder? 😉

We'll never know for sure, and calling it a pan-matriarchy may be pushing it, but I think there is enough evidence now that women have not always been "the second sex" and that there was a takeover - at different times in different places and to different degrees - which was associated with beginning to live in settled communities.

Going back to my book, what is fascinating about the real-life Amazons (Scythian women) is how equal their societies were. This was favoured by the fact that they were part of nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes and the equalising effect of practically living on horses. They were around 5'6, so a bit above average height, but not massively. They were just normal women trained from an early age to hunt and fight. A girl was not able to marry (or it might just be "have sex", can't remember) until she had killed a male enemy. Imagine that.
They had relationships with men, they birthed kids, they nursed their children, they fought to defend their home territory and to gain new territory and hunted for food. It sounds like an amazing life. They started young, carried on fighting after becoming mothers if they enjoyed it, and always hunted. Some of the graves of warrior women contained skeletons of women in their 50s and 60s! Women doing everything that men did but on their terms and in their own way.

@Summerhillsquare I know this is sacrilege but I don't enjoy Mary Beard's books/programs.

I did nearly knock her off her bicycle once - saw her just in time in my wing mirror- but I swear this is not related.

To add some humour to the thread.
A funny article on cave paintings from the Onion (famous fake news site - nothing they write is real or correct or even remotely plausible)

enjoy
https://www.theonion.com/newly-discovered-cave-paintings-suggest-early-man-was-b-1819576393

Cave art like these

I’m not convinced all these pottery or stone naked female bodies are goddesses or that there was a mythical pan-matriarchy before ancient civilisations emerged.

These artefacts have only survived because they are durable, not because they are necessarily special or meaningful.

For all we know they are portable Neolithic pornography given the many erotic cave paintings that also existed from 37,000yrs ago showing women having sex or naked with vulvas on display. (they don’t put these cave paintings in the textbooks for children ;))

😂

There were lots of uteruses in there though - seeing what they look like was a revelation to me! Like a kind of wrinkly woodlouse :)

Does Mary Beard have owt to say on this?

Any nonsense on Mumsnet is worth it for tips like this!

Roman sexuality seems to have been based overwhelming on being the penetrating partner. And the person being penetrated has v low status. So a lot of penises everywhere.

I'd recommend the Rest is History podcast episodes on Hadrian and Antinuous on this, and also for an eye popping number of Latin terms I certainly did not learn for GCSE.

Oh thanks - will investigate

I’ve always thought that the lack of features is because the goddess is unknowable, or that it represent ‘all women'. Who knows.
if you like novels about this period there is a good trilogy which starts 'the Years the Horses Came', by Mary Mackey, about the female goddess culture and the arrival of the male culture invaders, set in France and the Black Sea area. Very enjoyable books.